leatherback wrote: - In this case there is a need for -eventual- full bare rooting; POssibly in stages. Just to get the garden soil out

Good that you mention this... I have actually barerooted some of my transplanted trees and have had mixed results. For instance I've done it with two of my young atroporpureum acer palmatum... One of them died and the other One is still among us. Also I have repotted the rest of my trees without barerooting them and they all are still living. In general I know that this is a small sample to draw sound conclusions out of it, however in my humble opinion, barerooting always represents some more aggregated risks.

leatherback wrote: - I find that my rootballs drop a lot of substrate when repotting, causing an 80% bare rooting with just a normal repot-with-root-reduction.

Here I have also had mixed results. Some of my trees, as they faced their first repotting, didn't lose much of their substrate and I had to carefully clean and untangle the roots with a chopstick or the bear claw tool. Others did lose a considerable amount of substrate, but never to the extent of full barerooting.

Alain

alainleon1983 wrote: barerooting always represents some more aggregated risks.

of course! Howqever,, eventually you will have to try and clean it out. Especially if it was grown in very clay-like substrate before, in order to get the feeder roots near the trunk. Clay is potting space wasted. But this is exactly why collecting & digging up are specialized skills: Getting the plants to accept living in a pot, and then getting the rootbal to be reduced & cleaned are tricky and can rsult in the loss of a tree when done wrong.

Hi,
Thanks everyone for your usefull replies im getting much info from it all , i would like to add some details of my case to further this discussion
The soil my juniper was in before seemed pretty fresh as it was dark and smelt fresh but as i reached further into the rootball it got very compact and it was hard for me even to try brake it up a bit so i got as far in as possible without taring to many of the fine roots away , done that i put it in its pot with a substrate mix of perlite,sharp sand, gravel and coco coir. Since i thought that the rootball was to compact i spent at least 30 mins with a chop stick trying to get as much as i could of the mew substrate in the rootball .
Is there anything more i could have done or anything i done wrong
And is there any comments on the substrate im using just now ?

Enaisio wrote: Is there anything more i could have done or anything i done wrong

No, sounds good to me.

FYI: when I want to bare root my trees, sometimes I simply use a hose.

I tried using the hose at one point but it had no power in it and didnt work , i need to buy a good nozzle for it.
Ok now that weve said what we can about potting it , what do you think about the actual material ? I really like it and im pretty sure it is the oldest material ive got . Can anyone give an aprox estimate of the age ? And does anyone have any ideas of the style i can work this tree into?
Ps : i took the photo of that side only because the other side is compleatly covered by foliage some of it even cascades halfway down the pot, i will take pics of the other side as soon as i get home from work .

Enaisio wrote: Ok now that weve said what we can about potting it , what do you think about the actual material ? I really like it

Well, that's the important thing, right, that you like it?

I wasn't too sure... and then realized I was looking at the first pic
The second photo certainly shows potential.

And does anyone have any ideas of the style i can work this tree into?

Hard to say from one picture, but my first idea would be: semi-cascade.
Might change my mind to 'cascade' after seeing the other side

Ok thanks,
I would love it to be a cascade as it is my favorite style
Ill get the pics on as soon as
Thanks again

Here is the other side


Note that the pot is holding the lower branches up as they would be cascading much more if it wasnt.
This is the other side after moving the foliage away.


As you can see all the foliage is on the one side but im sure a good wiring will sort that
So Auk do you still think it could make a full cascade ?

Sorry here are the photos in order

Enaisio wrote: So Auk do you still think it could make a full cascade ?

Yep